“A Window of Opportunity”? Neoconservatives’ Grand Strategy and
Implications for U.S.-China Relations
Chengxin Pan
The best way of avoiding war is not to dismiss its possibility as outlandish; it is
to recognize how easily it could happen and vigilantly guard against the risk.
Will Hutton (2005)
Introduction
In July 2005, in his meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard in
Washington, President George W. Bush characterised U.S.-China relations as ‘a
complex relationship’. By definition, a complex relationship is not trouble-free. Yet, for
all the difficulties, the current state of play in U.S.-China relations stands in contrast to
that of the early months of the Bush Jr. administration, when China was designated as a
‘strategic competitor’. Bush now sees this as a good relationship, ‘very important and
very vibrant’ (White House 2005). Indeed, in 2003, then Secretary of State Colin
Powell went so far as to describe the bilateral relations as ‘the best they have been since
President Nixon’s first visit’ in 1972 (Kessler 2003: A15). If one looks at the two
countries’ cooperation on the ‘War on Terror’, regular visits by state leaders, the newly
established U.S.-China Senior Dialogue, among other things, one cannot help but agree
with such assessment. In this context, some scholars are equally optimistic, predicting
that the current U.S.-China honeymoon is likely to continue (Lampton 2003; Taylor
2005).
While sharing some of this optimism, in this paper I want to sound a different tone on
U.S.-China relations by suggesting that there still exists great potential for
confrontation. This view is not new of course, given the long-standing differences
between the two countries, such as the issues of China’s huge trade surplus, military
build-up, human rights, as well as Taiwan. However, my cautious stance here has less to
do with these differences per se than with a particular way of making sense of
international relations in general and U.S.-China relations in particular among a loose
group of influential people in U.S. foreign policy circles, commonly known as
1
Convention